GAZA CITY: Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed 15 people in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday, as the military expanded ground operations to the central city of Deir el-Balah.
Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP that Israeli strikes on the Al-Shati camp west of Gaza City killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 50.
Most of Gaza’s population has been displaced at least once during 21 months of conflict and the Al-Shati camp, on the Mediterranean coast, hosts thousands of people displaced from the north in tents and makeshift shelters.
Raed Bakr, 30, lives with his three children and said he heard “a massive explosion” at about 1:40 am on Tuesday (2240 GMT Monday), which blew their tent away.
“I felt like I was in a nightmare. Fire, dust, smoke and body parts flying through the air, dirt everywhere. The children were screaming,” Bakr, whose wife was killed last year, told AFP.
With private cars off the road due to fuel shortages, neighbours carried some of the wounded on foot. “There were no vehicles or even donkey carts,” he said.
Muhannad Thabet, 33, who also lives at the Al-Shati camp, called it “a night of terror” due to “non-stop air strikes and explosions”.
He said he carried a six-year-old child to get treatment and said the nearby Shifa hospital – once one of Gaza’s largest – was overwhelmed with wounded people.
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The civil defence agency’s Bassal said two more people were killed in Deir el-Balah, where the Israeli army said it would expand its ground operations, having ordered the evacuation of much of the area.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that between 50,000 and 80,000 people were living in the area, which until now had been considered relatively safe.
Some 30,000 were living in displacement sites.
AFP footage from central Gaza showed a large plume of smoke rising over Deir el-Balah on Tuesday while a surveillance drone was heard buzzing overhead.
OCHA said nearly 88 percent of the entire Gaza Strip was now either under evacuation orders or within Israeli militarised zones, forcing the population of 2.4 million into an ever-shrinking space.
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